Ask
most film fans what their favorite Martin Scorsese movies are and
you'll likely get answers that include such familiar titles as
Taxi Driver,
Mean Streets, and
Raging Bull. Not me. As great
as those movies are, the three Scorsese pictures that have the most
resonance for me personally are among his least known. My picks are
Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore,
After Hours and
The King of Comedy. I'm not
just being obstinate or different for the sake of being different in
picking these three. If I were doing that, I'd choose
Kundun or
New York, New York. It's just
that I find more to relate to in these three obscurities than in
movies about mobsters, boxers or psychotically obsessed cab drivers.

So far, the only one of my top three to find its way to DVD is
The King of Comedy. Robert De
Niro stars as Rupert Pupkin, a wannabe standup comic who lives a
vivid fantasy life in his mother's basement, dreaming of
superstardom and surrounded by cardboard cutouts of stars like Liza
Minnelli and talk show host Jerry Langford (Jerry Lewis). In
Rupert's world, fame is a given that will simply be handed to him on
a silver platter as soon as Langford gives him that one big break.
He has no interest in actually working his way up to the top. As far
as he's concerned, he's already there. The rest of us just haven't
realized it yet. Ultimately, Rupert comes to recognize that Jerry
isn't going to give him that break. So he takes matters into his own
hands and makes his shot happen himself.

If anything, The King of Comedy
is more relevant today than it was when originally released in 1983.
Ask anyone and they'll be able to rattle off a list a mile long of
people who are famous for no particular reason. Perhaps the only
thing that's changed is that these days, Rupert's cohort, obsessed
Langford fan Masha (Sandra Bernhard) would now become at least as
famous as Rupert himself in the aftermath of their plot.

Besides being eerily prescient, The King
of Comedy boasts a wide range of outstanding
performances. De Niro is fantastic as Rupert and Jerry Lewis makes
the most of one of the best roles of his career. Often in a film
like this, the script would avoid showing Rupert's routine or make
him look unbelievably terrible. Interestingly enough,
The King of Comedy shows
Rupert's performance on The Jerry Langford Show in its entirety. And
while he certainly lacks polish, he's not awful. The laughs he gets
are genuine, so it's easy to believe that he'd become an overnight
sensation. While The King of Comedy
lacks the flashy camerawork of some of Scorsese's other films, it's
still unmistakably a Martin Scorsese picture. The images of Rupert
performing to a wall of frozen black-and-white audience members are
unforgettable and the city of New York is every bit as much of a
character in this movie as in Taxi Driver.

Fox's release of The King of Comedy
is something of a pleasant surprise. The film itself looks and
sounds fine, certainly not reference quality but better than some
other movies of this vintage. Considering that this is a movie
virtually nobody was clamoring to see released on DVD, the fact that
the disc boasts any bonus material at all is impressive. Usually
movies like this are lucky to get a trailer. King
of Comedy gets a brand-new, albeit too short, making-of
featurette consisting basically of new interviews with Scorsese and
Bernhard. Also included is a pair of deleted scenes, the most
interesting of which is the complete take of Jerry Langford's show
opening monologue. Shot on video, it's a pleasure to see Lewis
throwing himself into the role with such enthusiasm. The disc also
includes a still gallery and a trailer and Canadian TV spot, both of
which do an abominable job of selling the film.

Given how much I love this movie, you'd think I'd be disappointed
by this scant handful of extras. Actually, I'm not. For once, I
think Fox got it right. While it's a personal favorite of mine, I'm
realistic enough to recognize that The
King of Comedy is a relatively minor Martin Scorsese
movie. The making of this movie probably wasn't all that terribly
interesting or unusual. Even a commentator as verbose and
interesting as Martin Scorsese would be hard-pressed to make a
consistently compelling audio commentary for this movie. The quality
of the extras included is consistently high and the quantity is
perfectly in keeping with the movie's importance. Fox included what
they could and didn't bother to include stuff that would be
tangential, repetitive or dull.

All things considered, I'm extremely pleased with
The King of Comedy on DVD.
Fans of Scorsese and/or De Niro should definitely pick this up
without hesitation. I'd like to think that After
Hours and Alice Doesn't Live
Here Anymore will get similarly respectful releases on
disc. But seeing as they're owned by Warner Bros., whose discs tend
to be all-or-nothing in terms of bonuses, I have my doubts.